Kennedy announced this week that U.S. is pulling all funding from Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, dealing a big blow to health systems and vaccine access in lower-income countries.
This is by no means a surprise as Kennedy is a well-known decades-long opponent of vaccines.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a world‐class public‑private partnership created in 2000 to expand vaccine access in poorer countries who would otherwise be unable to afford to fund vaccines for their people.
To date, it’s helped immunize over 1 billion kids, preventing more than 19 million future deaths.
In 2023 alone, Gavi-backed immunization efforts averted about 1.3M deaths and delivered lifesaving vaccines like pneumococcus, rotavirus, Hib, and HPV across 57 developing countries.
Vaccines are among the most cost-effective interventions out there with ROIs of 27:1 for many vaccines and all with an ROI greater than 4:1.
Overall, Gavi’s programs have generated roughly $220 billion in economic benefits since 2000.
The U.S. Government and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance | KFF
Up until this week, the US has been a primary funder of Gavi initiatives, contributing 12-15% of the GAVI budget. Below are the other countries in the top tier of donors
- UK: $2B
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: $1.5B
- United States – $1.3B (now $0)
- Norway – $830M
- Germany – $773M
Of note – the US held one of the 18 representative seats on GAVI’s governing board. After Kennedy’s announcement this week that will no longer be the case. More on that in a bit.
If other donors don’t step up to keep funding vaccines and or entire vaccine campaigns will need to be scaled back or paused. Immunization coverage could drop, leading to worsened outbreaks of measles, pneumonia, rotavirus, and future blasts of vaccine-preventable diseases.
This move, along with the US abandonment of WHO participation and dues paying (Kennedy ended that a few months ago) and Rubio’s elimination of the US Agency for International Development isn’t just bad for global health – it’s a squandering of decades worth of US global soft power.
Editorial Note: My first reaction when I heard Kennedy was pulling the US out of GAVI was – of course he did. Kennedy is against vaccines and now controls the purse strings of 35% of the federal government including the entire health portfolio.
My second reaction was sadness for the loss of vaccine that will be administered in developing countries.
My third reaction however, was – well maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. The US only contributes about 12% of GAVI’s budget. Does GAVI really want to have a troublemaker anti-vax zealot from the US on the governing board peppering them with garbage ‘science’ and hijacking meetings for the next 3.5 years?
Is it worth 12% of the budget to not have a knucklehead on the Board? Yeah
There are many wealthy nations not yet contributing substantially to GAVI including Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, etc. who may be willing to make up the difference and not put a wacko on the governing body.
Indeed, Healthwatch reported yesterday that despite the US abandonment of Gavi, they still exceeded their $9 billion pledging goal – with a record number of donors committing to the tune of $11.9B for the coming five years (2026-30). These are pledges – not actual dollars so don’t count the chickens yet.
Perhaps it’s best for the US to not be involved in endeavors like this for the next 3.5 years as with the current HHS leadership we’re more likely to cause harm than good.
